SQLBits: The new standard

Normally I don’t write blog posts about events I visit. But last week I attended my first SQLBits, and to be honest, I didn’t know what to expect. It’s just another conference I thought, with a lot of interesting sessions, nothing fancy. Well, I couldn’t be more wrong than that! SQLBits isn’t just a conference, it’s a cool event where you get to meet new people, see famous speakers talk, interact with them, and they organized an AWESOME party!

Location
SQLBits was held in Telford, UK, close to Birmingham. By train it took about an hour away from the airport in Birmingham to Telford. The conference center was a beautiful location, with hotels close by. So you didn’t have to travel in the morning to go to the conference center. You just needed to cross the parking lot to get to the location.

Pre-cons
On Thursday they organized pre-cons, which are full day instructor led training sessions. You need to pay for these pre-cons, but they’re definitely worth the money. You could choose a session from a list of 11, and I attended a pre-con led by Brent Ozar (Blog | @BrentO) about Virtualization, SANs, and Hardware for SQL Server.

Brent talked about how RPO and RTO are the starting points of any SQL Server architecture. He advises that the business needs to fill out a form about RPO (Recovery Point Objective) and RTO (Recovery Time Objective), so they start thinking about what they ask IT people. After that, he discussed backup strategies, HA (High Availability) and DR (Disaster Recovery) designs, SAN’s and SQL Server hardware. And even though I was familiar with some of the subjects he talked about, it was definitely a good way to look at certain things again from another perspective.

Sessions
Both Friday and Saturday were filled with good sessions . It started with a keynote from Nigel Ellis (Blog | @chillidemon) about Azure. It was a really interesting talk, and a good start of the day.

After that I saw some very interesting sessions about various subjects. The rooms were good, and all on 1 floor. So no huge groups that want to change floors, which I’ve seen at other conferences. This meant that rooms were easily accessible, and you could switch rooms between sessions very quick.

The party
On Friday night there was a party, organized by the SQLBits team. And while I’m writing this, I’m still impressed when I look back at the party. They had it all sorted out: great food, great people, great theme! Just perfect! The theme of the party was steampunk. They arranged for a carousel, huge slide (the Helter Skelter), and various carnival booths with games and entertainment. You can find pictures of the party on Twitter.

Looking back at the party, it was the best post-conference party I’ve ever seen so far. EVER!

Food and drinks
Just a small thing, but this really shows that the SQLBits crew really had it sorted out: the food could be found on several locations, and there were people that carried trays with food on it. They served the food in small, square bowls which were pretty handy to hold. Also, they served a number of different dishes, so you could pick whatever you liked.

The drinks were available throughout the conference center. So if you walked from one session to another, you could grab a coffee, tea, water or juice. It was really nice that they choose this setup, instead of 1 or 2 locations, which would’ve resulted in an endless line of people.

Feedback
If you attended SQLBits, one of the ways to let the organizers know how you think, is by filling out the feedback forms. Even if you have any negative feedback, please let them know. You can fill in the form in the links below:

You’ll help the organizers with your feedback, so they can make the next SQLBits even better (if that’s possible), and you get a chance to win a £100 Amazon voucher!

Thanks!
The last thing I wanted to do is give a HUGE compliment to the organizers of SQLBits, the volunteers and all attendees that made this an awesome event! I’m already looking forward to next year!